O'NEILL: My Republican nightmare

I used to have a recurring dream in which I found myself at work realizing that I’d forgotten to get dressed. In the dream, I struggled to get back home so I could get some clothes on and return to work appropriately attired.

I don’t have that dream anymore, but I’ve learned that it’s a common one, giving expression to the subconscious worries and vulnerabilities we hide from one another — and from ourselves.

But I recently had an even more humiliating dream. I spent a restless night dreaming I had been transformed into a Republican, and it was easily as embarrassing as showing up for work naked. Remember that Franz Kafka story in which his main character awakens to find himself turned into a bug? It was like that.

In the dream, I was wearing a lapel button with a picture of Paul Ryan, and I was carrying a copy of "Atlas Shrugged." In my other lapel was a button adorned with Dick Cheney’s face and a caption reading: "Got Torture?"

In the dream, I was constantly twisting my thought processes into pretzels. I watched myself, as one does in dreams, appalled by the contradictions coming out of my mouth. I worried about the debt the Democrats were passing on to future generations, but I argued equally forcefully that increasing tax revenues on wealthy people could do nothing to reduce debt. And while I fretted about the indebtedness of future generations caused by the 47 percent of Americans who were so shamelessly leeching off the productive among us, I was blissfully unconcerned about how manmade global warming might inconvenience those children of the future. As a dream-world Republican, I just knew that global warming wasn’t real anyway, and even if it was, there was nothing that could be done about it. Our children and grandchildren would just have to move to higher ground and wear lighter clothing.

My dream self was also adamant that black people were simply getting too many goodies from government, but I asserted with equal fervor that some of my best friends were black. I pointed to Allen West and Herman Cain to prove that my party was a magnet for black people, and I extolled the virtues of Florida’s Marco Rubio and Texas Tea Party darling Ted Cruz as models for what Hispanics might aspire to become, unless they were among that majority of Hispanics who simply wanted something for nothing. Those people, of course, should self deport.

I found myself arguing for less government intrusion while simultaneously trying to explain to my adult daughters why I now supported the government’s right to force women to undergo transvaginal ultrasound procedures if they so much as thought about terminating a pregnancy. Naturally, my daughters were deeply disappointed in me, and disappointing those offspring has always been my worst nightmare, as for most fathers. In the dream, I could feel myself shrinking in their eyes. And when I told them that I thought women should be punished if they sought to end a pregnancy created by an act of rape, my daughters’ disappointment turned to anger. I struggled to explain that God was bestowing blessings when rapists impregnated their victims. Believe me, that’s a hard sell, and as I sank deeper into the dream, I became more acutely embarrassed at the ideas I was advocating and the people now cheering me on. Michelle Bachmann blew me a kiss, and so did her hubby. Sarah Palin told me I was brilliant. George W. Bush bestowed a nickname on me, calling me "Dapple Butt" for reasons that made no sense, but which amused him enormously.

In the dream, I had an insatiable desire to break up unions, to deny working people the right to organize, and to build a nation where rich people ruled and poor people merely served them. In my dream, however, I was quite wealthy, and largely tax exempt, with friends like Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers.

Worst of all, I found myself flattered by the approval I was receiving from Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and those three weasels at "Fox and Friends." I had the flash of insight that corporations were people, and I was soon telling everyone that the only reason President Barack Obama had succeeded in getting Osama bin Laden was because of the groundwork laid by the Bush administration. Those comments were greeted by applause from Glenn Beck and the slimy Grover Norquist. Dick Morris, who is as creepy in dreams as he is in real life, appeared with a cell phone and a prostitute to ask me if I thought Obama was a Muslim, and I said, "of course he is, Dick. Barack HUSSEIN Obama? Well, duh."

And then even worse things began to happen. I looked in a mirror and found myself sporting a hairdo exactly like Donald Trump’s, a bit of hair architecture that required constant attention, making even gentle breezes a threat to my appearance. Maintaining my hair distracted me from efforts to talk sense into my former liberal associates, or my attempts to blame the poor for the lamentable state of the economy.

I jerked awake, finding myself in a cold sweat, the sheets twisted, my pillow wet with tears. Imagine my rejoicing at that moment, like Scrooge transformed on Christmas morn, and not a Republican at all. God bless us, every one.